Saturday, January 22, 2005

Donald Trump is an ambitious business man, that we know. A cut throat who gets what he wants, sure ok. But some lines you don't cross, not if you have character. Personal Property rights are a fundamental right. As fundamental as the right to pursuit of happiness, and as inalienable. No one, not the government, not the big business mogul, has the right to take your property without your consent. Much less without even offering a reasonable sum to buy you out with.

As the Supreme Court recently stated, "Individual freedom finds tangible expression in property rights."(6) The choices a person makes concerning her home or business are among the most personal and important decisions she will ever make.

This use of eminent domain for obviously private benefit has been made possible only because courts have abdicated their role of protecting individual rights and limiting government power. Originally, eminent domain was a power that allowed the government to construct public works, like roads and aqueducts. In the United States, both federal and state constitutions always have constrained eminent domain by requiring that private property be taken only for "public use." There is good reason for restraint. The power to throw someone out of her home or destroy a business is the ultimate despotic power, and it should not be used lightly.

That's wherein the problem lies. There is no such entity as the *public*. It is merely a collection of individuals, and by giving the public *rights* is merely giving rights to the few and the powerful who can bend the majority to their favor. The govermont should have no such *despotic* power in the first place. It ought to be protecting every individual's property rights, NOT taking them away. That is akin to the missappropriation of taxes as the illegal use of force against you by the government you PAY to protect you. Privatise the roads and aquaducts, no reason the government needs to do that either. The reasons are obvious. When you give the government power over non-existant things such as *public use* they are bound to define that so that it benefits themselves, knowing full well there is no such entity as the *public* but only *friends* who will do favors for them and so the game of political pull goes.

The Supreme Court decision in Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff(5) eviscerated the "public use" requirement of the federal constitution. At issue in that case was whether a Hawaiian law -- designed to break up a unique concentration of land owners dating back to the islands' kingly days and carried through to modern times -- was constitutional. Instead of holding that the pure transfer of land from owners to lessors violated the Constitution, the Court essentially said anything goes. It stated that it "will not substitute its judgment for a legislature's judgment as to what constitutes a public use unless the use be palpably without reasonable foundation." According to the Court, "public use" has no meaning apart from that given to it by the legislature. Midkiff left the door wide open for the kinds of condemnations taking place in Atlantic City and elsewhere. All over the country, governments take property unnecessarily, with no public purpose, and transfer it to private parties. But without legal limitations, government has no incentive to restrain itself The Coking case in Atlantic City asks the New Jersey courts to read three important words of its Constitution-the requirement that a taking be "for public use"-and force local governments to comply. Until there is a ruling that returns substantive meaning to these words, government entities will continue to try to take property for any reason at all.

Wrong Wrong Wrong. It asks the New Jersey courts to erase three meaningless words of it's constitution "for public use"-and force local governments to STOP taking property from individuals for any reason whatsoever. NO ruling can return substantive meaning to these words, since there never was any to begin with.

It is time to shift the balance away from government power and back to it's[individual] citizens. -Eminent Domain(Brackets added)

That's for DAMN sure.

But back to the title of this thread, Trump sucks for abusing this obviously immoral and unjust law. For using the politics of pull to secure his wealth he is nothing more than a looter, a politically sanctioned theif. It's no wonder his biggest fans think that "business is all about fucking people" as I've heard it said by one fan in particular. Trump is a disgrace to honest businessmen everywhere, and "Apprentice" is not going to redeem him. He traded his soul on that deal though, so in the end it's he who's been bankrupted.

2 Comments:

Right, the little guys pay, but not all richies are like that, that's why I wanted to post about Branson. There's a difference between earning wealth and using force to get it from others. There are always moochers in every class. The way the system is set up now, it caters to moochers, I don't think government intervention helps the little guys at all. This is a perfect example. Politics and money don't mix. It's a lose lose system. The government sells pull, and then they take my money to help the little guy they screwed over in the first place.

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"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours."
- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged